"What about that very first part of the journey? What about people who cannot access insurance due to communication barriers?"
Approximately one billion people globally have a disability and can often face barriers when visiting inaccessible websites.
Recite Me's assistive technology provides online tools to help people suffering with a physical condition that can restrict access to websites.
Alan Knowles, managing director of Cura, said: “It suddenly struck us that we are constantly working to improve accessibility in arranging protection insurance and we are making great strides in doing this. But, what about that very first part of the journey? What about people who cannot access insurance due to communication barriers? Dyslexia, deafness, blindness, physical conditions that restrict access to computers and telephones, English as a second language. These all present barriers to getting advice and understanding the information within key features documents and policy conditions.”
Kathryn Knowles, managing director of Cura, added: “We believe that this is an essential area of inclusivity that needs to be given clear focus. For us, an easy and essential way for us to improve Cura’s services has been adding Recite Me to our website in June of this year. This language and accessibility bar enables users to have documents read aloud to them, to download text as an MP3 file, change fonts, colours, sizes, to translate into over 100 different languages and has a fully integrated dictionary and thesaurus.
"There are still many steps for us to take, I’m currently starting a British Sign Language course so that I can ‘speak’ the language that some of our clients use. Even though I will not be fluent and I certainly will not be perfect, this will demonstrate to our clients that their needs are our priority.”
